Page 1 of A Heart of Winter (Fairy Tale Retellings #4)

Pity Party

I t was snowing again.

Great wet clumps of snowflakes swirled through the air past the window, down to the street far below, where the dark splotches that were people scurried along the sidewalk to escape the storm. Some of the clumps smacked against the glass with accusatory force.

My best friend’s face was reflected there in front of me. Her lovely dark face was surrounded by a riot of tight curls, the tips slightly bleached by the sun. Apparently, she’d been living somewhere sunny when I’d called to beg her help.

Her black eyes were silently saying “I told you so,” even if she wasn’t the type to say the words out loud. She knew well enough that I was already screaming it at myself.

Twenty years ago, when I’d started training Michael, she’d told me that it was a bad idea. That he was a terrible student. That him trying to push our relationship to another level was manipulative and shady as hell.

Me?

I’d been in love.

Michael was beautiful and clever and so very magical, and those were three of my favorite things.

He’d been thirty-five then, still full of the optimism of being young and raised human.

His sandy-brown hair always had this perfect wave in it, like it wouldn’t dare be out of place.

His blue eyes were the color of the sky on a clear winter morning, and as much as I was angry with the snow right then, winter had always been my favorite season.

I wasn’t angry with the snow because I didn’t love it anymore. I was angry because I couldn’t control it.

But it was all definitely my fault.

The snowfall became so intense that the world outside whited out for a moment, and then Morwenna’s hand was on my back. “Come sit down and have some tea.”

Her voice was low and smooth as the honey she would put in my tea, and it was the first thing that had sounded good in days.

“He said I’m boring,” I told her, turning in her direction and burying my face against her shoulder. “He said we live in New York, and hiding away in my ridiculous penthouse is boring and he didn’t want to do it anymore.”

She snorted, but wrapped her arm around me firmly and led me toward the sofa, where the steaming tea set was already waiting on the coffee table. I could smell the tea throughout the room—peppermint chocolate rooibos, one of my favorites.

Morwenna really was a better friend than I deserved.

Michael, on the other hand . . .

Well, maybe that was my fault too.

I wasn’t as much of a shut-in as he implied, but neither did I spend my time living the New York high life, though I could easily afford to.

I didn’t go to nightclubs or huge fancy parties. I saw the occasional show and shopped in the ridiculously expensive high end grocery store on the corner that had a collection of cheeses from almost every continent at per-pound prices that sometimes still shocked me.

Not that I couldn’t afford them, but it was a reminder of how much the world had changed. A few hundred years ago, you could buy a whole horse for a handful of dollars. Now, the same amount couldn’t even buy a pound of the good fontina.

Still, I’d always been sensible with money, and frankly, being a witch and living for hundreds of years tended to be good for a person’s accounts.

Some witches were like Morwenna, who didn’t pay much attention to silly things like money, owning nothing, creating whatever she needed, and living as she liked.

Some were like me, fitting myself into a place in human society, selling my services as a consultant for a wildly astronomical fee on occasion, and living in luxury because of my powers and the money they made me.

What could I say? I liked my penthouse apartment in Manhattan with its white velvet upholstered furniture, my beautiful full length cashmere overcoat, and the doorman downstairs who called me “sir.”

It was good to have fine things in one’s life.

It was important for someone who’d grown up an urchin, unwanted son of a rich man and his mistress, abandoned at five when my mother had died and my father hadn’t given a damn about me.

I’d spent my whole early life treated like an inconvenience.

Like the world would have been better off if I’d never been born.

Then the witch had appeared and said I was special, taking me out of the filthy alley I had been inhabiting.

She’d been a crone even then, and taken me off to her cabin in the middle of nowhere, where she was already raising and training Morwenna.

We could have been enemies and seen each other as competition, but instead, Morwenna and I had bonded.

Fast friends, almost brother and sister.

We’d both been from the lowest echelons of society, starving street children, when the witch had found us.

We’d both known how good an opportunity we had in learning with the old woman, and also, had always been interested in latching onto every opportunity given us.

Now, three hundred years since, Morwenna and I were still thick as thieves, though our mentor had long since passed on. We’d buried her there, in the back of her lush herb garden behind the cabin where she’d raised us, and still visited now and then.

“I can hear you obsessing,” she said, thrusting a cup of tea into my hands. “Drink.”

I accepted the teacup, trying to ignore the way it rattled against its saucer as I took it.

Morwenna stared. Then she sighed. “He’s not worth this, Johannes.”

“I know.”

“But you’re still miserable.” She poured her own cup, adding honey and then stirring, her moves as rote and efficient as a doctor sewing up a patient.

Tapping the spoon on the edge of the cup, she set it in the saucer and took a drink.

“Honestly, I don’t know how you can be unhappy about that leech leaving.

You love this place. Your life. All your beautiful things.

Michael was always an annoying little shit, and he gave you more trouble than anything else. ”

I sighed, slumping into the plush sofa and sipping at my tea. “He was . . . I was . . . I don’t know, Mor. We argued a lot, sure. And he always wanted things I couldn’t give him. Or things I didn’t want. But I just?—”

How did I explain something to her that I didn’t understand myself?

Michael and I hadn’t been right for each other.

He wanted to dress up and go out to a party, where he was the center of attention. He wanted to drink vodka martinis and dance and just . . . things I had no interest in.

I hadn’t been dancing since the modern style was ballroom dancing, and I hadn’t even liked it then. Now, with the flashing lights and gyrating sweaty bodies and bumping and grinding? It was a lot of work and messy as well, and thoroughly not my cup of tea.

Me? My cup of tea was the literal kind, preferably with honey. Add some ginger cookies and a good book, and I was set for the night.

Morwenna glanced out the window, where the snow was still pouring down. “They’re saying it’s the worst snow Manhattan has seen in a decade.”

I slumped even lower. “I know, I know. I’m .

. . I’m sorry. I haven’t done this since I was a teenager.

” I’d caused a blizzard because a boy rejected me once before—when I was sixteen.

I had thought the control issues with my power had slipped away when I’d become an adult, just like the control issues with my stupid libido.

But no. Michael had left me, telling me all about what a boring, wretched person I was.

He’d been brutal, ranting as he’d packed his things, about how tragic I was.

He’d focused on my lack of willingness to experiment in bed, and seven hells, I didn’t even think that was true.

Was it my fault he’d never seemed interested in doing anything other than plain old missionary, and I hadn’t pressed the matter?

He seemed to think so.

A lock of my silvery-white hair slid into my eye, and I moved to brush it back but instead caught it, staring at it. “Is my hair ugly? Michael said it looks stupid.”

Morwenna blew a raspberry, setting her teacup down on the table with a clack. “Now I know that bastard was up to no good. Sweetheart, anyone who tells you your hair is anything but gorgeous is lying to you.”

“He said I look like a cartoon character.”

She rolled her eyes heavenward, like she was begging for strength from above, and sighed. “Yes, sweetheart. You do. Like the cartoon character all the boys and girls swoon over. Your skinny little white-haired ass is just what everyone likes.”

I had a hard time imagining anyone finding me more compelling than her, with her lion’s mane of corkscrew curls and flashing black eyes, but I supposed we always did want to be what we weren’t.

Except her.

Morwenna was the best influence, always perfectly happy with who and what she was.

“If I were more like you, I wouldn’t be causing an emergency in Manhattan,” I grumbled. “I’d have told Michael good riddance, changed the locks, and moved on.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You haven’t changed the locks?”

I barely refrained from groaning again. “No. Does it matter? He left. While he was leaving, he told me that every single thing about me is inadequate, and the entire last twenty years have been awful, and a waste of his time. He’s not going to change his mind and come back.”

She didn’t have to say aloud that she was unconvinced; her glare and pursed lips said it all.

She’d always disliked him, even insisted on coming to see me when he wasn’t home after the first year or so.

Even told me that teaching a witch who didn’t want to put in the time and effort to learn properly was a waste of my skills.

And she’d been right about that. Michael had learned just enough to extend his life—to continue looking young and virile, without a speck of gray hair even though he was pushing sixty now.

He’d had no interest in doing more work.

Long workings of magic were a waste of time, he’d decided, and hadn’t read the books or learned the theory or . . . cared. At all.

Then a week ago, he’d decided that was how he felt about me as well, and he’d packed and left.

I’d been hurt, naturally. I’d spent twenty years thinking that Michael was my future. My literal forever. But he didn’t want that with me. Didn’t want me at all.

He wanted something fresh and new and exciting, and I’d never once in my life been any of that.

“Okay,” Morwenna announced, clapping her hands together and pushing up off the sofa.

“Here’s what we’re going to do. You have to leave Manhattan before you accidentally cover it completely with snow.

I’ll stay here and close up the penthouse for your extended vacation, change the locks, and ward it to kingdom come. ”

“You don’t honestly think that Michael?—”

“Sweet thing, I wouldn’t put anything past that fucking viper. You’re better off without him. We just need to make your heart realize that fact.”

It sounded more like a nice fantasy than reality, but what was I going to say? That people were supposed to like flashy parties and maybe there was something wrong with me? Morwenna didn’t like parties, and there was nothing wrong with her.

I took a drink of my tea and nodded, keeping silent.

She smiled, ran a gentle hand through my hair, and continued.

“I’ve got some property in Minnesota. They’re used to the snow, so if it’s worse than usual, they’ll just hunker down and live with it.

They won’t pretend it’s nothing and die of hypothermia because they refuse to use their winter coats because the cuts aren’t stylish enough. ”

I winced, but she wasn’t entirely wrong about Manhattan. But also?—

“You own property? Since when?”

With a shrug, she waved me off. “It’s a pretty little place in the middle of nowhere. It reminded me of home, but more remote, so I made the human records give it to me. It was just sitting there before, so it’s not like anyone misses it.”

I blinked, considering what she wasn’t telling me, or whether she truly knew that no one missed it, but it was usually better not to question her. It wasn’t like I would change her mind.

“You think I should . . . leave home?” I looked around my penthouse, forlorn. I’d spent the fifty years since I bought the building getting everything just how I wanted it. It was perfect.

“Just for a while, baby. Once you get over Michael and stop causing flash blizzards in September, then you can come right back and hole up again. Right where you want to be.” She paused and bit her lip. “Or you could take a vacation. Try somewhere new. I hear Hawaii is nice.”

Hawaii? Didn’t they have bugs the size of my head?

And hells, if it started snowing there, what were people going to think?

Still, Morwenna never said anything without a reason, and they were usually very good reasons, so maybe it was something I should think about.

For the moment, though, I supposed I needed to pack a bag for . . . for Minnesota.

Never once in my three hundred years of life thought I’d be saying that.